It started as a clone of Roboto, which in turn started as a clone of Helvetica (sort of), so that's not really a surprising reaction. Fonts are weird like that.
It’s the slightly condensed Roboto look but I’d say it looks a lot more like San Francisco with fewer things parallel to the baseline (not as bad as Arial vs Helvetica, but noticeable).
It's not just you... I think it reminds us of Helvetica because it borrows some common elements from Helvetica that are frequently changed in other Helvetica-like faces. For example, the ascender on the lowercase "t" is horizontal, unlike Arial. The apertures are also relatively tight, like Helvetica, and the x-heights are similar. I wouldn't say it's a clone though; it manages to look a little more humanist without being whimsical, which IMHO is a real accomplishment for a designer's first typeface.
Well observed. There are a myriad of influences in Inter, some from existing fonts, some from graphic design and shapes I’ve seen in my surroundings and some ideas that grew out of thoughts. For instance, the bend of the “t”, “f” et al just felt right and was not influenced by anything else but their own shapes. In contrast, the “a” was inspired by many existing typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica, etc. The shapes of the glyphs, spacing and angles of Inter have gone through a long evolution during the past three years. For instance, “e”, “1”, “s”, “g”, “n”, “m”, “d” (and several others) changed a lot early on.
